Dipleura – a Victorian trilobite

(dye-ploo-ra)

HOW BIG IT WAS

Dipleura was approximately 11 cm long.

A major extinction event at the end of the Ordovician period had a great impact on trilobites and other shallow marine animals. Trilobites recovered somewhat during the Silurian but never again reached the same diversity that they once had. In another series of extinctions in the second half of the Devonian, all but one of the remaining major groups of trilobites disappeared.

A trail through time

Trilobites appeared in the Cambrian and went extinct in the Permian. See how they changed through time.